Update 2015-11-26: fixed link to my config. Thanks, Thomas!

I use Gmail for my mail because it:

• synchronizes with my phone, which is handy for notifications and quick replies
• filters most of the spam for me
• works with a few interesting extensions such as Boomerang for Gmail

However, I like the way the Gnus mail/news client in Emacs gives me a much more keyboard-friendly way to manage lots of mail, and I can even write code to partially automate some of my common operations.

I used to have my config in in ~/.gnus, but people might find it handy, so I’ve added it to my public Emacs configuration.

I like using Gmane to read mailing lists, and I use IMAP to read my Gmail.

(setq gnus-select-method '(nnnil ""))
(setq gnus-secondary-select-methods
      '((nntp "news.gmane.org")
        (nnimap "imap.gmail.com"
                (nnimap-address "imap.gmail.com")
                (nnimap-server-port 993)
                (nnimap-stream ssl)
                (nnimap-authenticator login))))

I have two-factor authentication enabled for Gmail, so I set up an app-specific password for Gnus. I have an ~/.authinfo file set up with something like:

machine imap.gmail.com login sacha@sachachua.com password mysecretapppassword
machine imap.gmail.com login sacha@sachachua.com password mysecretapppassword port 993
machine smtp.gmail.com login sacha@sachachua.com password mysecretapppassword port 587

(I should probably get around to using GPG to automatically encrypt and decrypt this file.)

Sending e-mail on Windows was a bit of a pain. Fortunately, I eventually found something that works. I’ve configured emailrelay to accept the mail and forward it to Gmail. The server starts with this batch file:

start "emailrelay" "C:\Program Files (x86)\emailrelay\emailrelay.exe" --as-proxy smtp.gmail.com:25 --client-auth "C:/sacha/.emailrelay" --client-tls --log --pid-file "C:\Program Files (x86)\emailrelay\emailrelay.pid" --spool-dir C:\sacha\tmp\emailrelay

Sending queued mail works with this batch file:

"c:\Program Files (x86)\emailrelay\emailrelay.exe" --as-client smtp.gmail.com:587 --client-auth c:\sacha\.emailrelay --client-tls --spool-dir c:\sacha\tmp\emailrelay

I should probably get around to using --as-proxy properly, since it still seems to hold mail until I explicitly send it.

Some more config. Not sure how much of this is needed.

(setq message-send-mail-function 'smtpmail-send-it
      smtpmail-starttls-credentials '(("localhost" 25 "sacha@local.sachachua.com" nil))
      smtpmail-auth-credentials '(("localhost" 25 "sacha@local.sachachua.com" nil))
      smtpmail-default-smtp-server "localhost"
      smtpmail-smtp-server "localhost"
      smtpmail-smtp-service 25
      smtpmail-local-domain "local.sachachua.com")
(setq send-mail-function 'smtpmail-send-it)
(setq smtpmail-smtp-server "127.0.0.1")
(setq smtpmail-smtp-service 25)
(setq user-mail-address "sacha@sachachua.com")

Hide HTML mail. I need to fiddle with this some more, since Gnus still tries to display them. Sometimes my Gnus crashes when it tries to display HTML mail.

(setq mm-discouraged-alternatives
      '("text/html" "text/richtext")
      mm-automatic-display
      (-difference mm-automatic-display '("text/html" "text/enriched" "text/richtext")))

Hide quoted text.

(setq gnus-treat-hide-citation t)

Get smarter about filtering depending on what I reed or mark. I use ! (tick) for marking threads as something that interests me.

(setq gnus-use-adaptive-scoring t)
(setq gnus-default-adaptive-score-alist
     '((gnus-unread-mark)
       (gnus-ticked-mark (subject 10))
       (gnus-killed-mark (subject -5))
       (gnus-catchup-mark (subject -1))))